Saturday 26^th September, 2020 1520

Well Wednesday went well, the translation/international dept had clearly got their act together. Thursday was the turn of the English dept. First class was fine. Second class only half turned up initially as they'd only just been informed. The third class never turned up at all!

Somewhat annoyed, I sent a text to the Dean (which she replied to at 2320 hrs!) and at five I thought to hell with it and came home. The reason for the no-show? The freshmen all had to attend a lecture but nobody saw fit to tell me. The really irksome thing is that I had been feeling exhausted and ropey all day and would gladly have welcomed the chance to leave at four-twenty.

Not feeling too bad today although I have been turning in unconscionably early due to fatigue.

Yesterday I went to collect my passport, complete with legal documentation good until next September. I also asked them to get me a green code for Xining and it took four of them scratching their heads to eventually, after half an hour, to get one. Sadly I am completely unable to replicate their feat so when I travel I will try to simply wave a Lanzhou green and hope they don't stop me and if they do, beg for their help! At least I know it is possible and the code wouldn't be red.

But I got to thinking. My current passport expires in August 2022. My initial plan was to break my habit of not travelling far in spring festival and go to Shanghai in January or February of 2022 to apply for a new one. For some years now the Passport Office has ceased the option of UK citizens in China obtaining replacement passports via post, which is how I got this one.

It's a bloody imposition because I will have to go to either Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, all of which are a two-hour plus flight from here – and by appointment only! There seems to be an option to appoint a proxy to both apply for and a month later collect the new one. No idea what that entails but now I am wondering if I can cajole someone in Shanghai into 1) taking me to the consulate and 2) agreeing to return later to collect the new one if I decide to do it next summer when I will doubtless go to Shanghai anyway.

What with the state of the world right now I have a suspicion that even by next August international travel may still not be viable and even if it is, I would be too scared of getting locked out of China.

As for retirement plans, well therein lies a quandary. What with Joan backing out I can't see myself opening a bar, there's no chance of me having the sort of money needed and a Chinese bank would never give me a loan. Joanna voiced that she would happily run a bar if I opened one but it would still involve finding someone with the financial clout to make it happen.

I won't be able to actually work (other than being mein host) but I am sure I could make a go of it, eventually expanding into food. Alternatively Jody's brother specialises in visas so she could get him to organise me a business visa (and hopefully he can incorporate companies) and maybe it would be possible to open a business which may actually never do business!

I know it is almost two years away but it will pass faster than I expect and I need a plan.

 

Tuesday 22^nd September, 2020 2315

I think I know why I fell the other night because the same almost happened again today. Unless I have a bannister, I simply cannot walk upstairs or downstairs any more without putting a foot on the next step and having the other foot join it – not going to the following step. Luckily today when it nearly happened the stair rods were there for me to grab. Now that to me is really a sign of becoming infirm – and as things go, I am not exactly supposed to be geriatric yet. My body says otherwise. I just hope the pain eases in another day or so.

I also received a major setback to my retirement plans. Joan informed me that she didn't think she would follow through on the plans to open a bar. The possibility, nay the probability, was always something I had half expected. Her mother is ill, she has younger siblings and she is working hard to help her father support the family. When I asked what her father was doing she replied he was earning as much as he could to pay into his and his wife's pensions because he was getting older and weaker. Strangely, I can relate to that feeling. So I now have a lot of thinking to do as to what I will do in 22 months time.

This term's timetable after only two days of the full Monty is already killing me. Finishing at 1830 and getting home at 1930 means I am knackered. Going to bed at 0100 still sees me waking at seven or eight when I could sleep until midday if I wanted to! But at that time of night I don't want to start cooking by torchlight (I think the bulb in the kitchen is about 20W) even if I have the energy and I don't. I need to have a rethink on weekend cooking and freezing and have a clearout of the freezer to make space.

So far I have met half my classes and touch wood, not only are they below 30 students per class (wonder why!) but even the Chinese majors seem reasonably active. I may well find myself the least active in the class but I will get around that by recruiting helpers with the board.

Yesterday I waited for five minutes outside main campus for a taxi to take me home. Sod it, I had a pay rise that will cover taxis to and from and I have already been taking them to. The road they knocked down is a mud pit and it's a long way to the bus but none came quickly but the moment I had walked half a mile and was waiting for a bus no less than four vacant ones emerged! So as we had a flash storm just before my class ended tonight I decided I would wait for half an hour if necessary. Three minutes and I was on my way and boy, there were lakes on every road until we got close to my home. China still hasn't got the hang of the drainage thing.

Apologies for returning to the V word but of course I just heard the UK is now under further restrictions for at least another six months. Businesses are going bust willy-nilly and redundancies are about to skyrocket, the economy is halfway around the s-bend and every day there is a u-turn by the government. And they are hell-bent on destruction.

Firstly, I have to ask why so-called developed countries can't get a grip with 6 months of lockdown when China more or less killed it in five? I carry a mask in my pocket but only wear it now for the occasional taxi driver who asks me to and of course on buses. Otherwise life is pretty much back to normal. If they can do it, why not the “intelligent” countries?

I do watch on incredulously from afar and despite the gybes that I was mad/bonkers for staying here, my God I am so glad I did. I have made some good decisions and some bad ones in my life – as we all do – but that turned out to be a great one.

And do you know, when I decided to stay it was part can't afford to go anywhere else, part inertia, part happy here and part what the hell I can die from anything.

 

Sunday 20^th September, 2020 1315

Jody and I met up yesterday evening for dinner at Charlie's Burger. She had half a chicken done US barbecue style with vegetables, I played it safe and had a burger. Pity I never also played safe with the red wine.

When we got back I gave her the money to pay for the taxi and went to unlock the door. This time overindulgence was at fault, no idea how it happened but I managed to fall backwards down two steps and smacked onto the concrete floor.

Thankfully the only witness to this embarrassment was Jody, who kindly tried to help me to my feet. It was pointless as she is not strong enough for my weight so it was a very undignified case of me getting painfully on my knees and lifting myself up using the stair rods.

For my trouble I now have an extremely sore coccyx and a mincing walk.

This morning I had a bulletin from Shanghai concerning something I hadn't read in the news, not being a regular reader of The Independent. There have been 3245 or so diagnosed cases of brucellosis here in Lanzhou, caused by a biomedical factory producing vaccines for livestock using out of date disinfectants which allowed it to escape into the air. Apparently I am safe because human to human transmission doesn't happen but then they said that about Covid in the beginning........

http://www.businessworld.in/article/Bacterial-outbreak-in-China-infects-thousands-of-people-after-factory-leak-/18-09-2020-321833/

I researched the location of the plant and it is 13km from here but no wonder so many were infected – it is on the opposite bank of the Yellow river from the main downtown area where we were last night. Closer inspection reveals the outbreak actually took place last year and only now have they finalised the tally of those infected.

I never heard about it last year either!

 

Thursday 17^th September, 2020 1930

Life never gets easy, does it?

Hotels.com were done and dusted and never to be used or heard of again, right? Wrong. Yet another email telling me to contact the hotel urgently after I had paid, another confirming my booking for three nights and yet another asking me to rate my booking in experience yesterday! When I said I would never use them again I really meant it.

And then today I have had emails from students asking why they hadn't received any marks for last term's final exam. I marked and submitted the sheets by the end of June and here we are three and a half months later with quibbles. Damned good job I never disposed of all the paperwork. I have two who weren't at school but opted to take the written exam over the internet yet never sent their papers in and one who swears she actually took the exam in the classroom and yet when I checked her class there is no submission from her. The two have finally submitted their papers, the latter I have heard nothing from so far even though if she asks she can take the test from her dormitory.

The lockdown wasn't my doing and I did the best I could. I reckon I did a pretty decent job of testing nearly 400 kids so if there are any recriminations over this I will burst a blood vessel.

Next week is going to be arduous. I am so used to doing nothing. Teaching is not a problem and given that I only need to wake up one day a week at eight because most of my finishes are in the evening, the work part is Ok. But if I am getting home at 1930 in the evenings I am not going to want to cook and in China it's not as if I can simply buy microwave meals. It's fine for the Chinese, they can eat locally but even tonight from laziness I bought a chilli pork and rice for 60¥ to take away and I ate next to nothing. Not because it was too spicy but because the pork was too tough for my gums. I can't live on sandwiches every day so it is indeed rather a problem I need to resolve.

Oh, I took my smartphone on Tuesday to class to ask if the students could get me the green code for Xining which is in just over two weeks. No joy, they said the red thing meant I needed to get the police to fix it for me. Good job I am going to see them next Friday then when I get my passport back.

Stop Press! Just had a knock at the door. I don't get knocks on my door except when I have asked for workmen to come and fix something or the police do one of their checks. And at this time of night I guessed it was the police.

It wasn't. Absolutely no idea what it was about but it smacked to me of students doing the job of the police because they had a notebook and took photos using their phones while I stood at the doorway. I almost wish my willy had poked out from my boxers. Utterly ridiculous whatever it was, they never spoke English and everyone should by now know the only foreigner here lives in building 8, flat 102 – especially as the closest cop shop had to verify it two weeks ago for my residence permit renewal.

Maybe I just joined the Communist Party..........

 

Tuesday 15^th September, 2020 2000

Yesterday the hotel rooms were “opened” for me to book and pay for a stay starting tomorrow, which of course I will not. End of story?

It is as far as I am concerned as I now have a bank account to prove I paid.

Not so apparently with Hotels.com. Two emails today, the first sent ten hours after I sorted it telling me to urgently contact the hotel (but of course not them as they have no contact details other than foreign numbers) and the second to remind me I was staying at the hotel tomorrow! Definitely a site to avoid folks – and I very rarely recommend or pan anything but they deserve it.

After class today I was in two minds as to whether to go to BHG on the way home or leave it until tomorrow. I decided to go and got off the bus. As soon as I rounded the corner past Bank of China I wondered what the hell was going on. In four years, not even coming up to Chinese new year, have I ever seen anything like it!

The entire outside strip for shops resembled the old Wembley stadium before an England v W Germany game! It was of course due to students either returning to campus or freshmen arriving but I have never seen the like before and parents were contributing to the throng. I nearly fled on site but persevered. A man has to have his wine, after all.

Lines of youngsters clutching bowls, bedding, towels and all the necessities needed for campus life. Understandable but seeing as their parents were blocking the main road with their cars it begs the question as to why the hell didn't they just buy them in their home towns and bring them with them? And most of the parents were outside the supermarket waiting while their kids shopped inside. Interestingly, the mask wearing stipulation had been abandoned under the onslaught, as had the temperature taking and strict entry on the left and exit on the left policy. Thank God it should be back to normal next week.

And where I am reading about the strictures placed on universities around the country, today I witnessed students arriving on campus. Nothing unusual there except that I was told students were forbidden from leaving. By chance a couple of mine were coming in as I was leaving and so I asked why were they out collecting Taobao parcels when they were supposed to be incarcerated. They happily informed me they can leave at will now! Ok, I said a while ago it seemed pointless keeping them in when teachers can come and go (much the same as the UK opening schools and workplaces but inexplicably limiting other gatherings to six people) so for the students I am pleased.

However, compared to Westminster, China has throughout maintained a consistent and largely effective response to the overrated virus threat. I asked my class this afternoon their thoughts on how the USA and UK are dealing with it. They think Trump is a joke and are completely confused by the UK response. I can't blame them for the latter, I am sure most UK residents are confused and I foresee unrest in the future. If people see a rationale they will in general abide by restrictions but when they make no sense you cannot blame rebellion.

Anyway, enough of Covid, I have tried to avoid it as much as I can, particularly seeing I can host a party for 3,000 if I wish – and it is no dfferent to going to work among 10,000 students and faculty.

I wonder how many million jobs have been or will be lost worldwide due to panic and just how many years economic recovery will take. I can see a clear winner in this and that's what is driving Trump during his last two months before he finds out his fate.

Sorry, far too political!

 

Monday 14^th September, 2020 1940

Just maybe the hotel saga is over. It had better be, it kept me from doing anything else today but that's probably my fault for being conscientious.

Finally and astonishingly, they opened their rooms on Hotels.com when they knew I was going to pay, which I did. I now have three nights from Wednesday to Friday which I will of course not take.

An utter farce which has wasted countless hours of my time on hold for a non-existent online chatline and which has driven Joanna to the point of shouting at me because she has been “dealing with this shit all week!”

This shit was not of my making and of course she now knows this but the very fact she said it in the first place is upsetting. I have now paid Hotels.com the last money I will ever pay them. A company where the only contact can be through an international call is not for me. Give me Booking.com any day.

So today was completely wasted on that. No shopping trip, nothing.

Class tomorrow with no course agenda – what could be better?

Well, I am going to do my thing. If Dean Bitch has a problem I will give her one. She was in fact very nice last week I think but stupidly I never asked the students what she said while I was out having a smoke during the break. Perhaps I will do so tomorrow.

As you know the virus never worried me, nor did the Trump shit but the Oz journalists and now apparently other foreign journalists being targeted are ringing bells.

I am just a bloody teacher for christ's sake, I just want to do my job for two more years. I don't want politics to screw that up before August 2022.

 

Sunday 13^th September, 2020 1210

Since the last entry I have had both good luck and bad luck. First the good.

At the station on Friday I was fortunate to choose a cashier who spoke English. I had checked online and there were still five first class seats available on the train I wanted so for the sake of 93¥ I was quite prepared to simply buy a new ticket if the lost ticket problem couldn't be solved easily. It was, and I was issued a replacement one (a proper ticket, not a till receipt this time) free of charge.

Now the bad. Later that day I did my weekly BHG shop and in the early evening I received a phone call. The girl didn't speak English so I assumed it was a marketing call and terminated it. Minutes later Joanna phoned and asked me if I had received a call from Chizhou. I hadn't looked at the number so had no idea and explained why I had cut the girl off.

It was from the Grand New Century hotel, where we stayed three nights at the start of our holiday. They were chasing me to pay for the room!

Later after wracking my brain, I recalled checking in. Initially they couldn't find my reservation so I had to fire up the laptop and give them the reservation number sent to me by Hotels.com, who I had booked through. They found the booking and requested a 2,000¥ deposit which I assumed would cover the room cost of 1,404¥ in case I hadn't actually paid Hotels.com up front and the rest for incidentals. I had booked so many stays and flights I couldn't recall if I had or not.

When we checked out they gave me all my money back minus the charge for our buffet dinner on the last night, so I was quite happy at this seeming windfall – one more expense I never needed to bear. Now here we are a month later and they are chasing me for payment!

So I have checked my UK bank account and it would seem I have not in fact paid, despite receiving an email from Hotels.com which appears to state that I have.

I am actually getting irked. Of course I will pay because just as a supermarket checkout girl has to make good any mistakes she makes, as sure as eggs are omelettes someone who made the mistake will probably lose a fortnight's wages if I don't, not to mention if there is a dispute I would be prevented from leaving China in the future.

So I have now been bombarded with emails from Hotels.com demanding I contact the hotel immediately to make payment and the hotel indicating they don't have the facilities to debit my card! If they had done their job at the time they had the cash this would not have arisen and what's really annoying is that back then the exchange rate was 9.18¥ to the £ and since all the Brexit hoo-hah sterling has been in freefall and is now at 8.74, costing me more money unless I can find a way to get yuan to them. They have as yet not provided their IBAN and BIC numbers.

It's not MY fault!

 

Thursday 10^th September, 2020 1600

I'm heading for that long-overdue iceberg here! But first things first.

Today I went to campus to test that student, who it turns out I have never actually met before. While I was waiting, Sue (Dean Delia's assistant) came out after class and one thing led to another and I mentioned I kept getting a red screen when I tried to get the health code for Xining. She tried various times and got the same result, the student Amber turned up and did likewise and after forty minutes I said leave it, I need to go to the PSB later this month to collect my passport so I will ask them to help. After all, if the Public Security Bureau can't then who can?

So it turns out Amber had been off for an entire year, not just one term. Curious, I asked her what the illness was. She had to get her phone to translate and I am hardly surprised. She was and still is, suffering from endocrine dyscrasia, something I was under the impression only afflicted old people but clearly not. She did at one point decide to throw in the towel on her education and find employment but having tasted the delights of working for minimal wages, has now decided perhaps getting a degree is the better option. Unfortunately in China, no degree means sweeping the streets, waitressing, stacking shelves or other lowly tasks. Good luck to her. I bumped her score up for trying to help me and also to take into account she has lost a year of practising English.

Afterwards I went to the train station again. This time I knew there were no fast train tickets available and despite what the idiot told me yesterday they were on sale. With visions of being offered a standing ticket (as if I could possibly stand for three and a half hours on a slow train) I was relieved to be able to get a hard sleeper ticket which the chap assures me is the bottom berth. If it isn't, I shall pile everyone's suitcase up and sit on those!

But when I got into a taxi home, I couldn't find the ticket I bought yesterday!

I cannot for the life of me find it anywhere and I know I put it in with my passport receipt so it must have worked its way out. They don't issue proper tickets any more (the Chinese don't even get a ticket, it's linked to their ID), you get a little till receipt thingy.

So now I need to go back to the station for a third time and see if I can get a replacement. What with the tickets and the health code it's almost enough to make me want to just take a haircut with the 1,000¥ I can't get back from the hotel now and just forget the whole thing.

 

Wednesday 9^th September, 2020 2000

I have a girl who was allegedly ill all last term. Not sure I swallow that but she wants to have a chance at the exam for last term. So, for the sake of fifteen minutes I have to go to campus tomorrow and go through the motions. I can't even average out her homework as she never did any. She will however pass if she can get me a green health code for Qinghai province and Xining!

Talking of Xining, a travel catastrophe is long overdue considering the fact everything went swimmingly during the summer break. And sure enough, one seems to be brewing.

Jody was being evasive and dilatory every time I approached her regarding obtaining train tickets. I would far rather she had been honest and stated she wasn't going after all – for whatever reason. However I was given obfuscation after obvious fabrication as to why she couldn't order our train tickets online (her bank card was reinstated but only to withdraw cash, a blatant lie, when I said ok, come and show me how to do it with my card she was too tired and said oh, just go yourself, stuff like that) so today I went to the train station, the only way I know to do it.

I got my ticket to Xining but the clerk told me the return tickets weren't on sale yet. I was bloody sure they were because I checked online this morning but it's difficult to argue when your laptop is at home so had to take his word for it.

Unless the online touts have made a monumental error not only were they on sale but are now almost completely sold out. There are some slow train hard seats and sleeper tickets still available but at this late stage what are the chances of me getting a bottom bunk? No way on earth can I clamber up those frames without getting stuck, falling off or incurring a hernia, not to mention huge embarrassment. I shall return to the ticket office after testing the student but my gut says I am going to possibly end up paying a fortune for a taxi all the way back unless I can get a hard seat and I hate those.

But I am damned if being alone is going to stop me. I have booked it now and this time I cannot cancel without losing my money so I will have my luxury and my western breakfast. And my Brazilian barbecue and whatever the other restaurant serves. I did offer the opportunity to Adriana but she will be touring Inner Mongolia with her parents. Fine by me, I will just be a boring old fart only leaving my room for breakfast, dinner and of course the complimentary booze in Club Millesime. My sort of break!

It will though be the last time I ever offer to take Jody anywhere. I don't like to be lied to, especially using ones which are as transparent as cellophane noodles.

After the ticket office I went to Burger King. I almost walked, Google Maps said it was 700 yards but as there was light rain I took a taxi. Good job. 700 yards my backside! The estimated 10 mins walk would have been an hour! Worse, it said turn left out of the station when it had to be right!

I now have the rest of my timetable. The English department sent me one with a very long day, all three classes in one day – periods 3,4,5,6,7,8. All credit, all in the same classroom and all on the ground floor. Except they said Tuesday. I have already been assigned 5,6,7,8 Tuesdays by the other department. I guessed they had erred and meant Thursday and I was right. So I will hate Thursdays but on the bright side it means I have Fridays off. Quite when I can top up my electricity is unsure, no problem if the Auntie works on Tuesday mornings though. If not then arrangements will need to be made.

 

Monday 7^th September, 2020 1930

Having spent a lazyish day indoors yesterday and being a trifle more energetic today by way of shopping and cooking a vegetable soup, I planned to go out at 1600 to do so. Cooking for Jody is really inhibiting me what with the aversion to cheese and mostly meat. Well that will all be changing shortly and she will need to fend for herself. Not that she's not happy to, it's just that if I have a guest I like to cook for them. The reason she will be getting her own?

I now have 5/8 of my timetable. Every single class is after 1430 with Mon and Tue seeing 1830 finishes. I won't be cooking at that time so it is time to clear out the freezer and batch cook lasagne, bolognese etc for freezing. It just remains to see what the English dept come up with that I can scream blue murder about – 0800 start and 4.5 hour lunch break etc.

Having been told I won't be teaching until week 3 (21^st September) I wasn't entirely overjoyed to be told at 1430 today that I will in fact be teaching one class earlier, like, tomorrow afternoon! Ok, nothing I cannot take in my stride, it was just that a little more notice would have been better. And it's only two academic hours.

We have been holding back on booking the Xining luxury break. This was because Dean Bitch the Bully was telling everyone the national holiday might be cancelled as you may remember. Today Brenda called me and said she had checked with Mr Zhang and his reply was basically she was talking testicles. When I told Brenda the source of the rumour it was quite obvious I am not the only one with a low opinion of the person in question.

The problem is, being national holiday the train tickets are evaporating faster than a pee in the Atacama desert. I am waiting for Jody to come home to book whatever we can get. If we are lucky we can still get 1^st class there but coming back it will probably be hard sleeper or hard seats. Not a big thing for a two and a half hour journey you may think, but due to DB's lies, we daren't book our tickets through an agency before they came on sale. In China you can't buy rail tickets more than 30 days in advance so the trick is to use an agent who will snap them up the moment they go on sale. Costs 5¥ a ticket but well worth it.

So back to the grind tomorrow for a couple of hours.

 

Saturday 5^th September, 2020 1100

On Friday I cooked a simple dinner of tuna with pasta, peas, mayonnaise and Thai sweet chilli sauce. You-know-who complained there were no “veggies”. I pointed out that the peas we had spent a fortune obtaining the day before were in fact vegetables. Deciding this wasn't enough, she went out and bought a cauliflower to boil up separately afterwards! Talk about boring. Despite her doubts, once she started eating my offering she declared it delicious. Presumably she meant it because she polished the leftovers off for breakfast yesterday.

She had a meeting at school yesterday (all teachers except, thankfully, me) and I asked her to get the dates for the national holiday confirmed as we want to finally take that break in Xining and I don't want to have to cancel it for a third time. You may recall a year ago the government commandeered the entire hotel and then this year Covid scuppered the second attempt.

She was told that it is possible there will be NO national holiday this year! Allegedly they are thinking of cancelling it and starting spring festival a week early, the thinking behind it being that because the students cannot leave campus all term, there's no point in having a week off and they may as well have classes.

I have a couple of thoughts on this of course. Firstly the students will come and go at will regardless by simply clambering over the wall – and don't tell me you wouldn't do the same if you were a student! Secondly, no teachers or staff actually live on the main campus so all of them come and go daily, rendering the infection measures utterly pointless. And anyway, they won't be kept prisoner in spring festival.

When we got back last night I asked Brenda about the rumour and she said it was nonsense initially, until I told her the apparent reasoning. Then it was a case of wait until next week and I will find out. I think I am a reasonable, rational person some of the time at least but when certain measures are taken that are completely meaningless then I rail against them. This is one such case.

So as you can see from the photographs, we went all the way to Wanda Plaza to dine at Charlie's Burger. Regrettably the only toilets are upstairs or I would have eaten downstairs. Those stairs frighten me. It's only one floor but a very high floor so I am knackered well before the top. Quite apart from it being Cardiac Hill, coming down is even more worrying. There is no bannister. All you have is a metal thing like an oversized ruler turned upright sitting on a horizontal metal shelf, thus preventing you from actually grasping it. Remind me never to get pie-eyed there.

For some reason they converted my half-price bottle of wine into two free glasses. Fair enough, they seemed happy to see me back. This time I had the fish and chips and Jody the American platter, consisting of a mini burger, fish goujon, chips, buffalo wings and nachos. Very nice indeed and we were left full. We were also astounded by two slim young women on the adjacent table who ordered likewise. But then more and more dishes kept coming. Tacos, a spaghetti dish, and a buffalo wing platter. We had to wait to see if they could actually eat this huge amount. I can't confirm if they did but we did tarry until they started on the final dish – the tacos. I wish I could eat just one whole course!

 

Thursday 3^rd September, 2020 – Merchant Navy Day 1730

The glasses actually arrived yesterday, somewhat surprising because being stuck in the middle of deserts it usually takes three days. Quite why is beyond me, there are trains and planes from Shanghai every day, I don't think they use the Silk Road camels any more!

I am quite pleased with them overall although I think I should have insisted on varifocals as they are not perfect for watching films on the laptop. Also my left eye distance is not entirely fixed (again) but that may be either because I never checked properly when I went out into the Mall wearing those huge goggles (I was more interested in the result of both eyes used together) or because I had taken the test straight after taking the other pair off.

No matter. I just went to do a local shop an hour ago (didn't dare wear them outside yesterday in case I fell over) and they were fine. There was still some weak sunlight so I also got to see if they start to turn black, which they did.

Yesterday evening when Jody came back from a school meeting and preparing papers for returning students, she asked me if I had collected the specs. I informed her I was wearing them. She inspected them and then asked where the sunglasses were. They are the sunglasses, I said. Having lived with me all this year it is only natural for her to have picked up some of my below-decks language and her response was “**** Off!!!” She now understands what I meant when I said I had bought Reactolites. I think she is ever so slightly jealous.

It would appear that all the Chinese teachers have been able to look up their forthcoming timetable for a couple of weeks now but not me. Apparently I might be sent mine on Sunday morning. The school restarts on Monday so my information had better be correct – that all my classes are freshmen and doing their military training because I am not having a mad scramble at the last minute.

One major difference (or two, depending on how you look at it) betwixt me and them is that I do not eat the cold slop served up on campus – offer me a UK school dinner and I would rip your hand off – nor am I capable of walking huge distances to go and find an outside restaurant, especially since they demolished the street outside. Ergo, I have to plan my packed lunches.

They are simple affairs, I often bake a batch of sausage rolls and freeze them (must do that soon in readiness) or I get some bread from the bakery outside BHG for sandwiches, the one that sells bread that only tastes a little bit like cake. I have a supply of spreads and pates that I bought in Shanghai for that very purpose and of course now we have a Metro I have access to unlimited amounts of cheese.

Talking of Metro, we went there on Tuesday on an emergency mission which also included Burger King. While I was away Jody had eaten all the peas and neglected to tell me, I only found out when I was cooking dinner one night. Whilst in there we came across two foreigners who it turned out Jody knew. One of them, a blonde from I think Belarus, will be one of my translation majors. Looks as though the international side is again open for business.